This and That

It's like being on a roller coaster!!!  Or inside a kaleidoscope!

April is fickle, but March is just totally confused and can't make up it's mind what the day shall be. So it vacillates.....

The catkins grow longer each day, fringing the branches of the hazelnut with a golden glow in the sunlight, and quivering gracefully when the March winds pass through.

I am lured outside by the sunlight, which may or may not last as long as my energy and enthusiasm for tidying beds and raking leaves and poking carefully around the little dry sticks left on the perennials, looking for signs that something is stirring!!!  Especially with the new bed of peonies, - did I plant them too deeply?  Did their roots have time to settle in before November brought the frost and snow?

And somehow my enthusiasm exceeds my energy, and I remain outside, lost to time and indications of creaking knees, so that the whole garden operation results in days like this, spent indoors doing this and that and the other thing, while my knees recover.

I finish the thumb on my latest pair of fingerless gloves, made from Navajo plied singles

And I read a chapter of the Quick Read I brought home from the library the other day - The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd.  It is a novel inspired in part by the historic figure of Sarah Grimke who with her sister Angelina played a large part in advocating women's rights and the abolition of slavery, especially before the Civil War.  I am only on page 59 but expect the book to live up to the praises on its jacket.

I tinker with my new bedside CD player and radio, looking for a station that will carry me through the night with soft music, and bemoan the fact that it is no longer possible to get a multi disk CD player. Technology changes so quickly and I am continually learning about new ways of doing things from children and grandchildren when sometimes I would be quite content to just carry on with those things I am familiar with.

This afternoon the finals of the women's world curling championship will be on the Sports Channel, and the Canadian team are at the top and will be playing for Gold - I sent my timer so that I won't miss it!!  And search for a scarf pattern to cast on lovely lilac wool while I watch.....

This and that, and the day passes from sunshine to clouds, - a little shower, perhaps a cold March wind just passing through.  Lovely white clouds in the east - a dark curtain in the west that speaks of rain.  Never a chance to get bored with the weather in March......

I wonder if the sap is stirring yet

If wintry birds are dreaming of a mate,

If frozen snowdrops feel as yet the sun

And crocus fires are kindling one by one:

Sing, robin, sing:

I still am sore in doubt concerning spring.

Christina Rossetti